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#NorthamptonBloggerMeet

1 May 2014

Sunday 27th April was the big day! My sister Mia (Pretty Eclectic) has been planning the meet-up since December with a bit of help from me and she worked so hard planning it all and organising the goody bags so we were really excited for the big day and to meet everybody! Warning: This is a very long post!

After getting all the goody bags inside Pizza Express at 11:30am and getting myself a parking ticket (well done me), we all met at Revolutions at 12pm and had a few cheeky cocktails then the lovely Becky from Harlequin Cosmetics came to talk to us about her range of homemade skincare products! I was really excited as you all know I love natural products and the ingredients in Becky's products were pretty darn good; from cocoa butter in the body butters to a three ingredient lip balm - everything was right up my street!

SLS-free shower gels, gorgeous soaps and some lovely scented soap samples that Becky kindly made for us to take away! The cocoa mint one smells delicious! Becky also has a range of lip balms and different scented soaps for various skin types and some awesome body butters! You can visit her website here.We had a lot of companies that provided prizes for the raffle that we held at Revolutions such as Bodhi Skincare (Bodhi), SensatioNail Kit (Sparkle PR), Mandara Spa (Monty PR), MakeBelieve Beauty Instant Bronzer, Anne de Jeunesse and BalanceMe. I was very jealous of Ngoni as she won the gorgeous Jasmine Falls Bodhi Gift Set!

At 2pm we headed off to Pizza Express and had some delicious food! I had dough balls, Pepperoni pizza and Chocolate Fudge Cake. Mia & I had put the Kusmi Tea and The Blogger Programme bags on the girls chairs but waited until before dessert to hand out the other main goody bags. I think a few of the girls were surprised that there was more but Mia had been working extra hard getting samples and full-size products for the goody bags and I'm surprised the bags didn't rip as they were really heavy!

As I work in our family bakery, of course we had to surprise everybody with cupcakes! I hope you all liked them...I ate mine whilst writing up this post...delicious if I do say so myself. Our bakery is Gardners Bakery in case any of you want to check us out!

Pizza Express took less time than we anticipated so we headed off to the town centre and did a bit of browsing/shopping before heading off to LUSH at 5:30pm. We stopped off at Costa and had a hot chocolate and a bit of a chill then we walked round to LUSH to start off our last stop of the meet-up!

The lovely Sophie, Maddi & Martyn gave us a tour of the shop, talking to us about all of the products, from skincare to bathbombs, to their Emotional Brilliance Wheel & their spas! Oooh the LUSH spas sound so good I definitely want to visit one soon!

I was super chuffed when they were giving us the tour to find out that LUSH now offer four of their products as "Self Preserving" meaning that they don't contain parabens or any other synthetic preservatives. I was really intrigued and Sophie explained that they've added certain ingredients like extra Almond Oil and then Glycerin to help preserve the products and they still last up to a year! They also make natural deodorants which really excited me and I ended up buying The Greeench, which comes as a powder. I've been using it since Sunday and so far so good! Stay tuned for a full review!

MIRANDA SINGS soap! (I'm slightly obsessed with Miranda Sings). They have a wide range of skincare products as well as make-up such as foundation, mascara, highlighters etc. I did want to try their mascara but already had some on so next time I'm in town I'm going to pop in and give it a go!

The most exciting part of the day (as well as finding out about Self Preserving products, for me anyway) was the Emotional Brilliance wheel. This is a new feature in LUSH and the idea behind the product is that you wear a certain colour and you also wear the name that is behind that shade, e.g. Confident, Calm. I can see where LUSH are going with this and think it definitely is true, if you're feeling more confident and brave you're more likely to wear a vibrant shade!

There's more to the EB product selection though - LUSH offer colour readings! Basically you spin the wheel and choose three colours that stand out to you at random - without thinking about it, and each colour has a name. The first is your strength or weakness, the second is your subconscious and your third is your aspiration. Here are my results!

The first colour was a deep purple shade which was "Confident", then I chose a pale pinky-gold shade that was called "Dynamic" and finally a bright green called "Healthy" which is the choice I was most impressed by as I am choosing to live more naturally now since going green so the final choice really stood out for me!

At the end after we had all made our purchases, we were kindly given a product of our choice from the "Self Preserving" range and I chose Mask of Magnaminty and then also a shade from our Colour Reading. I did want Confident but they had run out so I chose Dynamic which is a gorgeous pale pink with gold shimmer. I can't wait to try this as a highlighter and eyeshadow! I'll be doing a full post about LUSH as I was really impressed with their service on the day as well as their product knowledge and the new Self Preserving range so keep an eye out for that!

Here's the big you might all have been waiting for; the goodie bags! Mia worked so hard and got some awesome brands on board supporting us with the meet-up! Here is a list of everything in the goody bags along with the brands who supported us and the PR companies who provided the products for us!

This is a photo of all of my favourite products that were in the goody bags! Mia kindly asked some brands that she knew were natural so that I would use them (sisterly love eh!) Bodhi kindly sent us a Neroli Luce Facial Oil (my favourite) along with a Flora Paradiso Oil and a Bamboo Flannel inside one of their travel bags which I love as it holds my make-up perfectly! I was really excited when Mia told me Sweet Cecily's were contributing as I love their products...looking forward to using the Elderflower & Almond Hand Cream. Kusmi Tea kindly gave us a tin of their Detox Tea and Viridian contributed a Coconut Oil & a sample of their Multivitamins which I'm excited to try out as I love their Clear Skin Complex! Green People gave us a couple of sample sachets along with their Make-Up Remover and we also got a Lavendar Soap Bar from Dr Bronners. Kiss Air Candles gave us these yummy scented candles that made my room smell delicious (Thai Lime & Mango) and Nanshy contributed with some of their brushes! Finally, Hotel Chocolat gave us some Salted Caramel Puddles (not gonna last long...) and Montezuma's gave us a chocolate bar too...organic yumminess! I tried BeautyIn at Be:Fit London and love their drinks so I'm looking forward to trying out their Beauty Bar!

I had such a fun day and I hope you all did too...enjoy your goody bags and if you do a post about the day then be sure to tweet using the #NorthamptonBloggerMeet hashtag and comment below so I don't miss it!

14 comments
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Looks like all your hard work paid off into a great day! Definitely exciting to see the direction Lush are heading in, lets hope more of their products become self preserving :) Also, I have Confident and it's a great colour! Although I'm not super keen on how it applies.

It was a really great day I'm glad everything went to plan! Yes I was so excited about Lush, I hope so too - they seem to be heading in the right direction! Ooh good to know - I haven't tried Dynamic yet but it does have methylparaben in it...does Confident? xx

Haha! All that swag was piled up in boxes in my room for the last 4 months so I was glad it's now all gone and I have my room back but it was an awesome day! Are you going to Mayah & Sabrinas Green Blogger Adventure in July? xx